Just tuning in a civic cipher. I'm your host, Ramsy's job. He is Ramsey's joh I m q ward. You are tuned into civic cipher.
Indeed you are, and we need you to stick around because there's been a lot of crazy stuff happening lately, in particular attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion, and this is something that is very meaningful for us here on this show.
We think that it is a very special.
Endeavor that companies and other enterprises can undertake. And yet attacks coming from the right have started to become problematic, and they've started to influence people and cause people to question whether or not it's effective, or whether or not it is creating the opposite problem, you know, in terms of like discrimination against white people. And so we have to give you some tools to work against that, and
a whole lot more. But the first and foremost, let's discuss becoming a better Allibaba Baba and Today's bob A sponsored by Friends of the Movement to support Black businesses and allied businesses. Sign up for the free voter wallet from fotmglobal dot com and make an impact with your spending. Again, that's Fotmglobal dot com and this comes from The Guardian. North Carolina Supreme Court judge is suing the state's Judicial Standards Commission for allegedly violating her.
Rights to freedom of speech.
After Judge Anita Earls made public comments about the lack of diversity in the North Carolina court system, the commission launched an investigation into her statements. According to a federal lawsuit filed by Earl's lawyers, the judge has been subjected to a series of month long intrusive investigations which have led to a chilling of.
Her First Amendment rights.
In a June article on Law three sixty, Earls pointed out the lack of diversity among North Carolina Supreme Court law clerks. Quote, if you look at who is hired to serve as clerks to the justices, we have plenty of female clerks, but on the racial diversity, we're lacking, Earl said in the interview, pointing out that there was only one black clerk and one Latina clerk employed in
the court's latest term. Earls also said that she witnessed implicit bias in court, telling the publication she witnessed a black litigator being attacked unfairly by Earl's colleagues. Earl said the Court's racial equity trainings and committees to increase diversity and inclusion have been disbanded. Earl's, North Carolina's only black female Supreme Court justice, alleges that the commission is targeting her ability to critique the Court, especially on matters of diversity.
The First Amendment provides me and every American the right to free speech and to bring to light imperfections and unfairness in our political and judicial systems. Earl said in a statement to The Guardian. I believe public confidence in the judiciary is best promoted by honestly looking at the facts, not by sweeping the truth under the rug or silencing dissenters. And using your voice as always is becoming a better ally, and we salute you.
So onward.
All right, let's talk about attacks on DEI and why it's still beneficial.
Let me do a little bit of reading to help paint a picture here.
I'm going to read a bit from MIT Sloan Management Reviews. The title is countering the Corporate Diversity Backlash, and then the subheading says, as opponents of inclusive business practices grow more vocal leaders are backing down from diversity promises or going quiet. Here's what they should do instead, all right.
Corporate diversity is facing backlash. Target A company that has carried merchandise celebrating LGBTQ plus pride or over a decade ordered some stores to remove such products after conservative activists accused the company of sexualizing children and organizing a boycott, and heyser Busch lost sales in response to a promotion with trans influencer Dylan mulvaney, costing bud Light it spot
as America's best selling beer. Even Chick fil A, perhaps the prototype of corporate conservativism, with its opposition to same sex marriage and policy of closing on Sundays, recently came under attack from conservatives for employing an executive to lead its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Universities are also facing
a diversity backlash. The US Supreme Court recently struck down race conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ending race conscious admissions.
Will likely have ripple effects.
This unclear regulatory environment might discourage organizations from implementing current diversity efforts. While spurring some to explicitly exclude black, Latin, and indigenous groups. All right, let me stop here for a second. So what we're talking about is the intersection of corporate interests and the pursuit of a more progressive and inclusive society. Now, many people who are educated tend to find themselves being pushed toward more liberal views the
more educated they become. That's true of most people. The more educated you become, the more liberal your views become. Right, that's not always true. There are many people who have graduated from very prestigious institutions that are deeply conservative. But if we look at the numbers, at least the numbers that.
But I just want to interject to point out the difference between education and enlightenment. I think those that are more enlightened, sure, team tend to lead more liberal.
Yeah.
Yeah, you can get twenty seven degrees and still be a racist bigot.
Yeah.
Oh absolutely, So it's not more educated, just more enlightened. Well no, no, no, So this is the thing. When you follow like those with more degrees with more with higher education, more years in academia, and then people who continue with their their that part will say enlightenment you know, just kind of beyond their academic studies. You find that people tend to be more liberal. The same thing with
people who travel. With more exposure, more information, with more data, people tend to appreciate a lot of the similarities and the commonalities that we all share. This is my guess. This is not hard data, but again please for yourself look it up, because again, the more educated people are, the more liberal they tend to become. It's not a
broad sweeping statement, it's just a tendency. So I suspect that a lot of these people who are leaders of these companies on some level know that a more liberal philosophy leads to more profits because it includes more people.
Go ahead, and that's the part that makes it all so confusing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's what I'm going to say, a lot.
Of our listeners don't know that. When I'm not sitting in front of a microphone with you, I'm traveling all over the United States having conversations on diversity, equity.
Inclusion, also on user experience and user interface.
Important to point that out because Uxui education has seen a boom companies like Google offering certificates for students to learn about ux ui and corporations paying a lot of money for people to research and implement things that make for a better experience for their users in real time or user interface for those who are using their apps or their websites, because they understand that if it is a more equitable experience for everyone, that they will make
more money. The pushback comes when you say we want there to be a better experience for poor and black people. Then that's when they brustle in, cringe and push back, even though you're saying the same thing.
Before we move there, though, let me flesh this out a little bit more so. The forces of capitalism push companies to pursue profit at the expense almost of everything else. Okay, the easiest groups to dismiss are poor people and brown people just because, uh, there's there's rarely a cavalry that
comes to the aid of those people. If it's rich white people, you know, they are a lot more vocal, they have a lot more political influence, they have a lot more dollars, and they can spend with those dollars, and.
People listen a little bit better.
You know, we've been complaining about police violence since police violence existed, and there's still police violence.
But I mean, the really the really interesting thing, Rams is that.
Underrepresented groups, as you said, don't really have a cavalry that will you know, that will cause big change on their behalf. But in recent years, it used to be in bad taste, just in battle, to be a flagrantly a pex predator capitalist at the expense of, like you say, everything, everything and to be mean to people that were underrepresented
and marginalized was in bad taste. Now that that's no longer the case thanks to our prior president, you see things like this happening at an alarming rate that the Supreme Court taking legislative measures measures i'm sorry, to remove racial sensitivity or just racial consideration and the admissions process. And people don't understand these programs didn't say disqualify white candidates, just consider others. Consider others should not be controversial. You
know what's crazy about it here we are. What's crazy about that is that the legacy admissions that often fills the ranks of people that attend these prestigious institutions. Those individuals, again, their legacy admissions, they're not the most qualified with the best grades and the you know, they were on the swim team and the lacrosse team and whatever. They just were related to somebody else that went there.
So that is the affirmative action for you know, non black people right there.
If there's a legacy there then as if they needed it. But there's that in addition to okay, so watch this, let's let's tie together.
So what you have is people that tend to be more educated, but then they intersect at corporate interests, the capitalistic interest, right and the most vulnerable people are black people. So you have some people in a position that might say, you know what, now that I see all these black people protesting is twenty twenty, let's see if we can provide some DEI initiatives to bring to bring black people
back into the conversation. God knows, we've abused them and subjected them to or overlooked them for.
Or even if we didn't abuse and we overlooked them.
They're being abused all this time. Let's see if we can't support them. Plus, since all eyes are on black people right now, it's the cool thing to do, right. So I believe there was some hearted people who you know, along with their education, got a little bit more awareness or some smart capitalist because I don't want want benevolence either or both. Yeah, and that's that's what I'm trying
to say. So you end up in this situation now where people put together these uh diversity, equity and inclusion endeavors, and you know what doesn't matter to us.
We want results, right, We don't want talk. There's been talking.
There was talking the sixties, talking, the seventies, eighties, nineties.
You and I have spoken about this before. We want outcomes, outcomes there, and we can care. I care less about your intentions than the outcomes.
Right.
So Nike promoted Colin Kaepernick when he was under attacked by the right and by the NFL because he kneeled against police brutality, and a lot of people thought that was an unpopular thing to do for Nike to support this man while he was, you know, in some people's eyes, bad for marketing or bad for pr. I don't know if Nike was being benevolent, I don't know, but stepping out like they did and supporting him in that moment
meant a lot to me. It didn't matter if it was just so they could keep me as a customer. The out come meant this massive corporation, one of the best in the history of retail, supporting a man that was under fire for very very righteous beliefs, and it stirred up a sort of loyalty with their customers.
Right.
Nike is on the feet of most professional athletes, and in the major sports here, you know, football, the NFL, and the NBA being the most popular, the most popular,
the most successful athletes in those sports are black. So they not just had they didn't just have a fiscal responsibility to their shareholders and to their customers, but all of their partners, all of the athletes that represent the brand, lots of black Latino you know, Asian and LGBTQ athletes have Nike swooshes on their feet and on their jerseys. So they had in their own heads of responsibility to
support the movement. But I think somebody in that room also understood, hey, this could also be a good financial move for us. I don't care which person's voice was heard, the outcome was still resounding support for someone who needed it.
Yeah, yeah, there's and I like that you said that briefly For those that don't know Q and I, before we did this show, we had a nonprofit where we fed homeless people. We were part of hashtag lunch Bag, the global initiative to feed homeless folks, and we had a chapter in our city under our own nonprofit, and we would go out on the streets and there would be people that would come out and feed people, and they would do.
It because it was a popular event. We had DJs.
It was fun, it was something to get out of the house on Sundays and they'd be out there taking selfies and look what I did.
I fed some homeless people today.
And the truth of the matter is that we never really pushed back on what people's intentions were because the result was that people were being fed. We did our best to protect the privacy of those who were on the streets. We didn't want them to excuse me, be subjected to any violations pr right. But for the people that showed up to the actual event were putting the sandwiches together, not the distribution part.
For anybody that came there just to hang out, even.
The people that didn't go to distribute, they just came and helped pack hygiene kits or you know, clean up shoes for us or whatever. As long as they came and did the work. However it benefited them personally, how whatever they wanted to get from it, that was not our concern. Our concern was to make sure that we were doing our best to support our unsheltered brothers and sisters here in Arizona. It's hot in Arizona. People die all the time just because it's too hot. They can't breathe.
So we're trying to do something, and we were taking all comers. So get I get your story about Nike. But here's where things get a little hairy. So I'm gonna read a little bit more so. Diversity backlash puts companies in a difficult position. Bowing to pressure from anti diversity groups may cost them the goodwill they have tried to cultivate among other consumers. Targets capital capitulation sorry to conservative pressure earned it blowback from progressive activists. Backing down
can also con sorry, I'm gonna start. Backing down can also encourage conservative activists to push their demands further. In other words, if conservatives feel like they're gaining ground, they're going to double and triple down. Right, this is how we lost affirmative action, something that stood in the courts for decades that really did impact outcomes for people, even the people that are mad, even the Candace Owens of the world, even the people that didn't like affirmative actions,
they benefited from it. And it's on record them saying that they benefited from it. For those that don't know, Candace Owns is somebody that I don't even need to explain to you, So don't.
Worry about it.
So Supreme Court Justice, Oh yeah, Parence Thomas, Yeah yeah, also a beneficiary the affirmative action. I forgot about. I forgot about that. Yeah, So all right, let me continue reading. While it might temporarily reduce the pressure on companies, giving into anti diversity forces could hurt them over the long term. Demographics are changing. While with non whites making up an increasing portion of the coveted youth market and legal protections
for LGBTQ plus Americans have broad support. Rooting out discrimination and increasing access to opportunity is essential to ensuring a rich talent pipeline, and for many individual managers and employees, anti discrimination is simply a moral imperative. Okay, So so far we're talking about companies trying to put together DEI initiatives making sure that black people are hired that they're.
Promoted women, Yeah, Latin, Hispanic, Asian.
Exactly, exactly, BIPOC people not having a C suite executive board, all your senior vice presidents being white men.
Yeah, just different diversity, yeah exactly.
So again, these folks have leaned into these initiatives and trying to get more voices in the room, a more diverse set of people with more views and better insight into how to penetrate different cultures, cultures and markets that might be untapped, and just to be again a kind
and follow that moral imperative that the article is talking about. Right, So this is what was happening in one Well give it a little bit of time, and the right pushes back saying things like, well, DII training doesn't work.
It's like preaching to the choir.
The only people that participate in that are people that you don't have to already don't have to worry about. And the people that aren't going to hear it aren't going to hear, and people are going to be tone deaf because it feels to them like reverse racism. We're promoting these people specifically because they look like this or they have this experience our.
Same group making those claims supports and pushes for more training for police, because of course police wouldn't have those same implicit biases and turn the death are to something that's going to cause corrections and behaviors. Same group arguing for one, arguing against the other, exactly.
And I'm going to add to that real quick. I'm going to add to that real quick, that police training doesn't work. Please check out our last episode if you missed it, where we talked about what you just said right there, just to kind of make that live a little bit more for you.
And with the E programs, it's not just training there and there are initiatives that have to be implemented. There are measurable, deliverable outcomes that thank you to come as a result of that training. It's not like, hey, just be nice to your black coworker. You know, there's much more substance behind that.
Yeah, exactly.
Again, it's not just hiring people, it's promoting people. It's listening to people. It's incorporating authentic stories and perspectives into your corporate culture culture.
That's the way I was looking for.
Thank you so again, with this pushback and a lot of you know, the media, the right wing and far right wing. Really the right wing is pretty far all of it, because Fox News is yeah, yeah, Fox News is pretty far. But you know, some of the stories I've seen covered in these right wing media outlets really try to suggest that DEI is something that only exists so that the people who make money from it can
continue to make money from it. In other words, DEI speakers, DEI people that travel and like spend time with companies to try to help them implement, develop and implement a plan or a strategy that will be effective in and reshaping their corporate identity and their corporate culture. Those people only exist to continue to make money. That it's not they're not effective, and there are no outcomes, and that
they cite the numbers. It's a three point six billion dollar industry, so naturally these people want to keep it going, and it's not effective and it doesn't work, and it results in blah blah blah.
So exactly the same points could be used to support initiatives against every industry on earth, exactly for profit capitalist society.
That's the point exactly. So watch this. There's an article that came out long before these pushbacks that really helps quantify really what's at stake? And I'm gonna just kind of share a little bit from you, but it comes from NPR. The headline reads, cost of racism US economy lost sixteen trillion.
With a T.
Remember we were talking three point six billion dollars. That's what DEI, the industry, the DII industry is worth. But the cost of racism US economy lost sixteen trillion because of discrimination. Bank says, okay, so look the article up, read it for yourself. But in short, this is because of lawsuits, but more importantly, it's because of marketing blenders. Again,
there's corporate blind spots. When you don't have black people in your room and you offend black people or Hispanic people in the room, and then you spend offend Hispanic people, you spend money. Then you have to spend money making it right. Then you have to respend the money to try to penetrate those markets when they turned against you.
You have to say this before we go.
More than a thousand X lost on what it would cost to continue to implement the training, more than a thousand X and losses.
Racism is strong, White supremacy is and they need to be real ride for it, riding for it. It's says sixteen trillion with the tea.
And there's people that's riding for it, act like they didn't even know that number was true, and I'm sure that they do. But we are going to leave you with that and leave that right there. So once again, i'd like to thank you for tuning in the civic cipher. I'm your host, Ramsey's job.
He is Ramsey's joh I am q Ward and we just equally learned that racism is stronger than capitalism.
That's crazy.
Well, that's crazy, yeah, yeah, man, it's it's a it's a it's an interesting world to be born into, to be born be be born black and have to make a go of it. And then if we try to bring attention to something, people say we're playing the victim.
We have a victim mentality, and no, this is our reality.
You think we want to live like this, You think we want to make a I want to make a show that's fun. Man. I don't want to make a show talking about all of my problems, but these need to be addressed and hopefully we've done right by you.
If so, please do us a favor.
Follow us on social media help us combat the trolls that we describe.
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To hear from you. And until next week, y'all peace,